When I left my History PhD program, colleagues kept asking me… “So what are you going to do? Teach?” Turns out, yes. Though not as a History teacher. At the time, my response was that the education I received gave me a bunch of skills I could translate to other thing. Teaching. Though I didn’t […]
The Cost of Burning Yourself Out
The people who love me warned me…. Wendy, you can’t keep up this pace. No. I can’t. Not for lack of trying. The issue is permission. Giving myself permission to work at a more reasonable pace. There is a ridiculous amount of research outlining the psychological, physical and emotional cost of burnout. However, many of […]
Valuing Yourself
I mentioned in the last post that one of our identified stop-work states was The amount of time needed to get it working surpasses current resource availability (we need to pay someone OR the resources are risking jobs or clients to complete the work). Why? As knowledge workers, our time is money. Our brainpower is […]
Accommodating Ambiguity
In Wendy’s Utopian Fantasyland (wanna live there yet?) – there would be no uncertainty or ambiguity. Every decision, every plan, will be made within clear, stable environments. Priorities would be unchanging. Markets and competition would be understood and predictable. And all stakeholders agree on the scope, desired results and importance of the project. You can […]
Accommodating Life
An easy, unspoken assumption I make when doing my personal resource calculations on a project is “I have all the energy and focus in the world to do this”. I’m also an admitted workaholic and want to believe I can do all the things in record time. I’m learning to slow down (admittedly with LOTS […]
Thinking in Terms of Projects and Systems
As you may have guessed – my thinking tends to bias towards “systems thinking”. (And in Wendy’s utopian fantasyland – these systems result in projects. Because I like clean end points.) What does this look like? 1) Is there a distinct deliverable involved? If yes, then AWESOME! I can do my planning process, templatize this […]
Focusing on the Process
Eric Nehrlich’s post on the Island meta-narrative got me thinking about goals, results and achievement. So much of my life (and my business) is about goals and results. Get the application launched by x date. Desired result [add business objective here]. Recently, I have based my “goal-setting” more on whether I think I will […]
The Joys and Hazards of To Do Boards
I love To Do boards. Trello, Dotstorming, Post-It Notes and whiteboards. Completing tasks makes my heart sing! I also know that it is personal and that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. ———————– I’ve been working with some friends on To Do boards for their respective businesses. They are structured as 1-2 week “sprints”. The key […]
The “Getting Your Ass Kicked” Part of the Program
What Snowboarding is supposed to look like. I don’t aspire to jump off of 50 foot rocks. I just want to be able to turn pretty. ——————- This winter I decided it was time to get serious about learning to snowboard. I figured I was never going to learn by taking a beginner class once […]
The Importance of Accountability Partners
I’ve learned over the years that any major change is more likely to stick when you have accountability partners. Those really important friends who touch base and ask “So…..how’s that THING going?” With the tone that says “You’re doing what you SAID you were gonna do…..right?” I’ve been very blessed to have a number of […]